It was dark days at Six Feet Mine, headquarters of the Six Feet Underdogs. The celebrations of game 200 seemed an eternity ago to Ba’rat as he shivered alone in the dark of the mine tunnel, with only his other head for company, but his other head had dozed off hours ago and was now quietly muttering the names of various artisan cheeses in his sleep.

It had started when Xar’anx had died, if you could call what had happened to him death. The elves had been targeting the zombie rat all game, but his infamously impenetrable AV7 hide had held solid for most of the match. Finally an elf had landed a telling blow, hardly powerful enough to knock down a goblin but it was well placed on Xar’anx’s weakened jaw. The whole lower part of the rat’s face had detached – not generally an issue in itself, but as Xar’anx bent down to pick up his dislodged body part there was a horrific tearing sound and the stitching holding his decaying flesh together over his multitude of injuries ruptured in several places spilling what remained of his internal organs onto the pitch. There was a deathly hush around the ground as the U-dog star collapsed to the floor like a deflating balloon, several of his limbs jolting free as he impacted the turf. The silence was only broken by the sound of retching elves and Gerald bellowing ‘MEDIC!’

The apothecary had tried his best, but each of the separate parts of the disassembled corpse were still animated by the dark power that had created them – the claw tried to snip off the foot of a passing opponent, the intestines had wriggled into the turf of the pitch like worms and the stomach had attached itself to the apo’s head in an apparent attempt to digest its way to his brain. Worst of all was that the cohesion of Xar’anx’s flesh had finally degraded to the point where it couldn’t retain stitches. By the end of the game most of the rat’s body was back together but even the lightest of touches was enough to cause it to rupture again. Gerald was the one to make the hard decision to let the star die and ordered his corpse dismantled and burnt.

Ba’rat felt the bile rise in his throats at the memory of the smell as the goblins had fed those decaying body parts into the bonfire. The scent was so bad even Gerald went off his food. It had hung around for days afterwards dampening spirits and inducing vomiting in those careless enough to inhale too deeply.

With the loss of one of his greatest creations Gerald had become despondent. He spent his days searching through old notes looking for the warpstone recipe he had once used to successfully blend parts of his old friend Ber’anx with a rookie blitzer to create the monster that was Xar’anx. On an evening he and Ba’rat would sit alone in the old mine owner’s house and Gerald would glumly talk about how little hope he had for the team without a strong blitzer and hint at his own retirement.

But now there was a new terror besetting the team – the night goblins had started turning up dead, their bodies covered in scratch marks. Several of the fearful runts claimed to have seen something like a large spider scuttling trough the darkened tunnels of the mine. The only other evidence for the nature of this new predator was mysterious bright pink flakes left on the bodies of some of the victims. The goblins had gone on strike, refusing to go back into the mine until whatever was haunting the passageways had been captured. And so it was that Ba’rat was huddled in the darkest corner of the goblins’ dormitory with a net and the largest squig wrangling stick he could find waiting for this new horror to show itself.

Hours had passed – his other head had started to snore and Ba’rat’s tail had got pins and needles from him sitting on it for too long – when he spotted a movement across the room. It was hard to see in the dark – just one shadow shifting against a darker background until the thing had scurried across the narrow shaft of light provided by a candle in the corridor outside the room. Ba’rat glimpsed something grey with a splash of bright pink at the end of each of the rapidly moving legs before it disappeared under one of the bunks. Ba’rat readied himself – net in one hand, stick in the another and gently tried to wake his sleeping brother with his third.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement – the thing had dropped from the ceiling onto the bed in front of Ba’rat. The legendary rodent slammed the stick down as hard as he could, felt it make contact, and then quickly covered the bad with his net, surely ensnaring whatever creature was there.

“Did we get it?” asked Ba’rat’s other head, who had been awakened by the sudden movement.
“Think so” replied the senior of the two brothers, as he withdrew the hitting stick and raised it back above his heads for another strike.
“You gonna look? – make sure?”
Ba’rat gently lifted the net and peered under, at an empty bed.
“Sheeeeet! It in’t in there!” He stared around the room looking for any sign of the homicidal monster he had just irritated with a stick.
“Its gonna be mad now” fretted his brother
“Don’t whimper, just help me bleedin look for it!”
Seconds pass with both heads scanning for any movement before the younger Ba’rat thinks to look up.
“The stick” he whispers in a strained and fearful voice.
“We got the stick what do you want it for?”
“No bro, look at the stick” one of Ba’rats hands gently twists the senior head round and upwards towards the large club still poised over his heads.
Gripping the other end of the wrangling stick is a hand, a left skaven hand with the remains of pink nail polish on each of the claws. Slowly and with a remarkable level of menace the hand extends its middle finger.

An hour later and Gerald is watching as the surviving hand of Xar’anx explores its new home; a large aquarium salvaged from the local midden which had been patched together with tape and reinforced by cast iron straps.
“Well done capturing it my dear rat… rats” He beams, sounding more upbeat than Ba’rat had heard him since the ill-fated match. “It would seem this little rascal escaped from the bonfire when we tried to burn our poor departed friend and has been hunting the goblins that tried to incinerate it ever since. It also seems to retain a remarkable amount of the spirit of Xar’anx, and of course Ber’anx, I mean it is really very psychotic.”
The disembodied hand started to try and thump its way out of the tank by repeatedly running knuckle first into the glass.
“I think I shall keep it and I shall call it Bane… perhaps I could extract some of the cells and introduce them to one of those new rookies we have” Gerald’s eyes glinted “perhaps the future of the team is not a bleak as we thought!”

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Ba'rat did not come away from his adventure unscaithed; Bane had given him a nasty scratch running the length of one of his arms. True to form the scratch festered becoming a bleeding ulcerated sore that itched and distracted Ba'rat enough that, a few games later, he failed to spot the Mutazone skaven blitzer's attack. He was violently upended and as the conjoined brothers hit the ground there was an audible snapping as both his necks broke.

The team apo did what he could, fixing the neck of the senior twin but it was impossible to heal both injuries and Ba'rat was left with one head flopping around in a rather comical fashion, causing him serious balance issues. Gerald's solution was to try and cut the now useless, but still alive, head of Ba'rat jnr. away from the rest of the body. However, the fraternal love of the twins has always been strong, together since birth Ba'rat Snr could not countenance a life without his younger sibling at his side. Ba'rat refused the procedure, instead disappearing into the mine's lower tunnels in the night, never to be seen again.

In the course of a few days the U-dogs had lost two of their strongest ever players, the team is in shambles, will Gerald be able to rebuild or will he too finally retire from the game?